The Advanced Masters in European Law (LLM in EU law) is targeted at students who want to develop recognized expertise in European Union law and benefit from the exceptional location that the ULB offers in this respect.

The course trains students in the practice of European law whilst allowing them to acquire the necessary theoretical knowledge to anticipate the evolution, during their professional careers, of law that is constantly changing. To satisfy this requirement, the academic staff is made up of high level researchers attached to the ULB but also to other international universities (European University Institute of Florence, HEC Paris, etc. …) as well as well reputed lawyers and members of European institutions (Court of Justice of the European Union, European Commission etc.).

In addition it relies on the ULB’s Institut d’Etudes Européennes which, in parallel to its interdisciplinary research on European integration, has teams of researchers specialised in European criminal law, in fundamental rights, in European asylum and immigration law as well as in economic law, which feed the content of the courses and fuel the debate around the process of European integration.

As it is an Advanced Masters in law with the aim of training experts in the law of the European Union, access to the Advanced Masters is in principle restricted to holders of a Masters 120 in law or holders of foreign qualifications deemed to be equivalent. However, other candidates can also be admitted on the basis of their educational background after approval by the jury.

The Advanced Masters in European law is bilingual. The classes are given in one of the two following languages: French or English. The Masters therefore requires an active knowledge of one of the two languages and a passive knowledge of the other.

Curriculum

The Masters course includes a core part (European constitutional law, jurisdictional protection in the European Union, the law of external relations of the European Union as well as a course aiming to grasp the current issues of European integration).

Should they so wish, students will, in addition, have the option to orient their course to a particular area of European law, be that ‘European economic law’ or the ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

Finally, students will have to produce a piece of work at the end of their studies in one of the three following forms:

TFE traditional ‘research’ on an issue relating to European law;

Career-oriented TFE combined with an internship;

TFE in the form of participation in a moot court competition (European Law Moot Court Competition or University of Lille II or another).

Main assets

In order to train fully fledged legal professionals in EU law, the Advanced Masters in European law draws on its privileged location to bring together high profile practitioners and teachers into its teaching staff. Through an international group, the students will therefore be able to analyse the most recent developments in EU law whilst appreciating the evolution of the latter in relation to their national systems.

To do so, the Masters is based on an interactive approach to teaching during the course in the form of simulated plea bargaining or simulated trials to allow students to put the knowledge that they have acquired directly into practice.

Career prospects

When they have finished their Advanced Masters in European law, the students are ready to access a wide range of jobs related to law and to European integration.

Thus, among its graduates, the Masters has led to people taking on roles as diverse as: judge in the Court of the European Union, adviser to the Court of Justice, administrators in European, international or national institutions, lawyers acting in different branches of EU law, managers in NGOs or interest groups or teachers/researchers in European law.